When Pedro Ponce de León opened his school for non-speaking children with profound deafness, he had no delusions of teaching without the aid of adaptations. His early work remains instructive to us today. “Ponce’s work was … an astute application of the sign language he and his brother Benedictine monks used daily. Ponce’s great achievements may not have been teaching speech and language to the deaf boys but more his recognition that disability did not hinder learning and his use of alternative stimuli…. Most importantly, perhaps, Ponce de León was the first successful special educator, and 1578 the year in which special education truly began.”